Sotomayor, Racist?

This might not be the best line of attack:

Unfortunately for her and fortunately for us there are plenty of things that we've even talked about her already. I'm telling you, she appears to be a racist. She said things that are racist in any other context … You can still be a racist and have all those things in your background. You can be a racist and have all that stuff in your background.

Putting Tom Tancredo front and center against Sotomayor must be the Obama administration's dream come true. The critique of her seeming preoccupation with her heritage nonetheless seems valid to me, but it's also a little – how does one say this? – 1995. The underlying arguments about affirmative action are still relevant, of course, but their salience seems less potent now. I'm not sure why – perhaps the war and the recession and the debt make the intensity of those fights seem like a luxury of a time of peace and prosperity and fiscal sanity. Perhaps Obama has made racial diversity less threatening to some. I see nothing in her record to disbar her from her seat so far – and one should remain aware that many special interest groups on both sides have a financial interest in stoking polarization whether it's merited or not.